Russian superstar Alex Ovechkin has been cleared to play in the IIHF World Hockey Championships after team officials were able to resolve his insurance issues.
Ovechkin had been traveling with the team but unable to play until the Russian Hockey Federation could insure the record 13-year, US$124 million contract he signed with the Washington Capitals.
He took part in his first practice with his Russian teammates on Wednesday.
Finnish defenseman Joni Pitkanen meanwhile pulled out of the championships with a knee injury, but he wasn’t getting much sympathy from head coach Doug Sheddon.
“I wouldn’t put a gun to anyone’s head to play for their country,” said Sheddon who is convinced the injury wasn’t all that serious.
“The commitment has to be better and I didn’t see a whole lot of commitment from him,” Sheddon said.
Pitkanen, who plays for the Edmonton Oilers of the National Hockey League, told team officials he hurt the knee while lifting weights on Monday.
“If a guy is injured and doesn’t want to be here, then we don’t want him here,” Sheddon said of Pitkanen, who is in the midst of trying to renegotiate his NHL contract with the Oilers.
“It’s a contract year and when it’s a contract year and they break a thumbnail it hurts a little bit more,” the coach said.
“We don’t have a whole lot of NHL defensemen, especially ones who can skate like a deer,” he said.
Finland picked up Olympic and World veteran Teemu Selanne on Wednesday, which will help soften the blow of losing one of their best skating defenseman.
Finland’s opening Group C game is today against Germany.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier